Hollywoodgate Directed by Ibrahim Nash'at
Hollywoodgate
Directed by Ibrahim Nash'at
Country: USA, Germany
Year 2023
Review author: Shane Virunphan
Click Here for Italian Version
“Americans left us an enormous treasure.”
How many wars has the United States of America fought, provoked and unleashed?
How many coups did he organize? How many enemies has he killed, wounded, tortured?
According to a 2015 article on the site inform.over-blog.it (1), from 1776 to the date of publication, the USA had only twenty-three years of peace: from The American Revolution (1771–1783) to the War in Afghanistan ( 2011-2015). The war in Iraq again. Civil war in Ukraine and that in Syria.
On the site libraries.indiana.edu (2) Indiana University Bloomington counts forty-eight wars up to 2003.
Wikipedia reports one hundred and ten but the update is in real time. (3)
These are the direct conflicts then there are those wanted by the USA but engaged in by other nations such as the current war between Ukraine and Russia. And all the subtle underground maneuvers to instigate clashes, coups, attacks, kidnappings. The most famous is the CIA's intervention in Pinochet's coup in Chile and the subsequent bloody repression.
There have been countless wars, making an exact count impossible. Guessing America's wars is like guessing beans in a box. It's impossible, you can't keep up.
In these umpteenth wars, how many victims were there? Considering only the most sensational massacres:
in the Korean War about three million, (4)
in the war in Vietnam the estimates depend on the sources, from three million one hundred thousand:
“… according to a newly publicized survey by the Government, took the lives of 1.1 million Communist soldiers and two million Vietnamese civilians. (The Government says it has no way of estimating the number of dead from the former South Vietnamese Army.)” (5)
until it reaches five million:
“Cinq millions de morts: 20 ans apregraves la fin de la guerre du Vietnam, le gouvernement de Hanoi a reacute veacute leacute, lundi, le bilan d'un conflit dent le nombre de victimes avait eacute teacute minore a l'eacutepoque pour ne pas affecter le moral de la population.” (6)
Then there would be to add the deaths in Cambodia and Laos.
In the Iraqi one (2003) there are two hundred thousand:
“Approximately 200,000: The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war.” (7)
For the newspaper il Manifesto the overall total is between twenty and thirty million deaths. (8)
And how many wars did the United States win after World War II?
Clint Eastwood responded in The Gunny: they won the war against the great power of Grenada with its one hundred and ten thousand inhabitants.
Has it always been the fault of these evil nations? Was it Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, the island of Grenada that violated, attacked, meek America?
The answer of director Ibrahim Nash'at, in his documentary Hollywoodgate, is certain: it was the ruthless Afghans who attacked the United States. Did American soldiers only defend their homeland by building the first defensive line 11,925 kilometers from home?
Hollywoodgate was presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.
Afghanistan has always been a country with many difficulties and numerous wars. In 1979, there was the Soviet invasion, which lasted for ten years. In 1996, President Bush orders its occupation. An atrocious, harsh war, with two different strategies. The Americans with deadly and very expensive weapons, and the Taliban with guerrillas and rifles. On August 30, 2021, Yankee soldiers fled Kabul in a daring manner, recalling the same defeat in Saigon in 1975. Once the Americans had left, the Afghan army, trained and armed for years by NATO, had to face the Taliban. But in a single day of advance, the army disbands. The soldiers flee, the armaments are abandoned, piled up in the forts.
The documentary tells the story of these weapons, forgotten by distracted Americans. Sophisticated, lethal weapons remained intact and ready to be used.
Kabul. A market, potholes, poppies, women beaten in the street by the Taliban. They are grainy, seemingly amateur images. This incipit superficially reports the multitude of clichés belonging to the collection of images of the Afghans. Poverty, destruction, drugs, machismo.
From these sequences we move on to clear shots of Ibrahim Nash'at, who manages to be accepted by the Taliban to film them for a documentary. How he accomplished this is unclear:
“… until it led me to Malawi Mansour, who had just been appointed as the Head of the Air Forces. He directly accepted my request to film Mukhtar, so I asked to film with him too and he agreed.” (9)
...
“Though I thought that my background was what would ensure my access, their exaggerated interest in the work I did filming world leaders made me realize that what they saw in me was someone who could feed their internal image of themselves as people of power.” (9)
He lied? Did she deceive them? Was he recommended? And by whom? Why was Ibrahim Nash'at chosen among so many interested reporters? Did he play on their vanity of being protagonists of a film?
The film does not portray the Taliban in a good light. However, Ibrahim Nash'at does not seem frightened by their reputation for bloodthirsty, on the contrary he continually appears calm and peaceful.
The director follows the Afghan general Malawi Mansour, commander of the Afghan air force, but I doubt that he had a fleet of military planes.
Malawi Mansour fought in the war. His father was killed by the Americans.
The film starts from the inspection of an air base dubbed Hollywoodgate by the Americans. A pun? Not so much, it was a war and it was at the service of cinema, producers and television. Or rather, at the service of the powerful arms industries and the warmongering politics of the newcoms.
The Taliban are walking around, observing these war machines, never seen before. They wonder how they could use them, if they will be able to use them, if they need to practice. They have these weapons but they don't have the know-how to shoot them, they don't have the instructions but perhaps in the world they will find someone capable of using them.
The Taliban talk about money like normal administrators, but they don't seem very good at mathematics, but arithmetic is not essential for flying a plane.
The general speaks of the desire to penetrate Tajikistan but confesses the impossibility since they are allies of the Russians. The Russians also appear with the arrival of one of their diplomats to attend a prestigious military parade.
Then there are the slaps to soldiers who want to participate in a party without having an invitation.
The film proceeds with many small, cropped sequences shown in a succession of rhythms.
The Taliban are haughty, anxious about the challenges ahead. They are powerful, proud of victory and optimistic.
They are certainly not corrupt, they are not weak, they are not distrustful otherwise the director would never have made this film.
Some symbols can be clearly read. Besides the weapons, what did the Americans leave inside the base? Alcohol, ruins, dirt, confusion, depression. The normal crap after the escapes of the marines.
The pride of the Taliban is represented by security, if they had had their American technology, they would have dominated the world. Rational reflection difficult to understand for a decadent West with backward morals and an unpleasant future.
They are even well versed in American psychology such as their awareness of being afraid of being mortified in the face of China.
They know journalists correctly: “I don't like journalist”. For the Taliban they are all spies in the service of foreign intelligence.
They are also big children, like when they run surprised on the tapin routant.
More disturbing is the parade of suicide bombers in the parade with the other troops.
Ibrahim Nash'at is a heterodiegetic narrator but with a political perspective on the events. He perceives the suffering but not the causes. There is no depth of thought, because there is no historical or scientific analysis, not even a banal alternation of opinions, a debate. He simply resumes knowing, once finished, that he will return safe and protected in the West.
There is no expectation, plot or even fabula. There is no tension, a development.
There is no atmosphere, there is no discussion between good and evil, since the director has a preconceived filmic idea, he places all the blame on the Taliban. Afghans are poor, surrounded by rubble, dead, maimed, who is to blame? Obviously the Taliban who have been in government for just a year, who have managed to manage a destroyed state. While the twenty years of a pro-American government, which maintained power with the army, regardless of the will of the Afghan people, were similar to a Renaissance.
The director accomplished his theme without infamy and without praise because he appears lazy and lazy. He films with a snobbery similar to an English colonialist sipping tea in the shade while he watches his workers pick cotton in the scorching sun. The film is a missed opportunity, politically correct, reactionary and soporific. All it took was a little nastiness to be on the right path.
Gianfrasket, “Gli Stati Uniti sono stati in guerra 222 anni su 239 che esistono come stato”, 26 febbraio 2015, http://informare.over-blog.it/2015/02/gli-stati-uniti-sono-stati-in-guerra-222-anni-su-239-che-esistono-come-stato.html Translated by authour
https://libraries.indiana.edu/political-history-americas-wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States
https://english.news.cn/20220902/735703a45cfd458791179d4c0a80e727/c.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/iraq-war-numbers-rcna75762
https://ilmanifesto.it/dal-1945-ad-oggi-20-30-milioni-gli-uccisi-dagli-usa Translated by authour
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